Minimalist Occult

Hello! I’m relatively new to your site and was delighted to find out that you’ve also got minimalist leanings! As an aspiring practitioner of “lagom“-style minimalism, I’m pretty good at keeping my living space clean. I’ve been running into a new obstacle, however: witchy paraphernalia. Ever since I started exploring Western and Eastern occult, the desire to collect useful magic pieces (athames, stones, and fetish statues, oh my!) has drawn me back into patterns of accumulation. I want to try everything, and some practices require certain tools. My eccentric Aquarius Sun seems to be conflicting with my martial Aries Rising and moody Scorpio Moon in this regard. Do you have any thoughts on how to be an effective yet minimalist witch/occultist? Thanks!

Raye

Hi Raye,

There IS a cliche that witchy type have these cob-webbed, clutter-filled spaces of expired spices, rancid patchouli and mouldy bunches of herbs breeding ear-wigs or something and i am sure these people exist.

Personally, i have found the occult types who most like paraphernalia and ritual tend to be Catholic or Ex-Catholic. I think the magic is within you and that the less clutter in the way of energy, the more freely it flows. You ARE the spell. Magic wise, i practice Feng Shui but true Feng Shui is not heaps of statues or “cures”.

But having said that, it sound like you are doing Wicca and that is more “thing” involved. I’m Pantheist – the world is a magical being and i also think that, as we are soaking in Dark Matter – we ARE quantum energy buzzing about in multiple dimensions – that the very awareness of that (via meditation, yoga, acupuncture, dreams, binaurals, astrology etc) forestalls the need for ritual objects. But i am insane for minimalism – what does everyone else think?

95 thoughts on “Minimalist Occult”

I am a Maximalist Minimalist 😀 I would suggest one of those cool Chinese medicine chests to keep all your paraphernalia in. Your moody Scorp side will love all the little hidden -away boxes and drawers.

Or Hell, get that Aries rising on side and MAKE ONE.

If you go for ritual magic, you need various knick knacks. I have an altar at home, which I have to keep decluttering, but all the really powerful stuff is threaded on a ribbon which I wear around my neck or on my bedpost. Probably a good thing as it includes a particularly bolshy piece of moldavite….

(Does anyone else have problems with their moldavite ? Mine refuses to co-operate in any way. I’ve cleansed it with selenite, salt, moon- and sun- light. I’ve given it flowers… Zip. Nada. Nothing. I actually asked it if it was really a piece of glass, to which I got a very indignant “NO”. But it doesn’t leave. I’ve had crystals leave before, but this one just seems to want to hang around, without *doing* anything. All ideas gratefully received :D)

Moldovite is irascible as far as crystals go imo!
I can’t wear it as I get jittery.

It was used for arrowheads back in the day and I think that is an excellent use for them. They really have that piercing quality common to tektites – maybe having been a comet lately they just like the speed.

Also I have a habit of picking up crystals I don’t need for fun.
When I get home I find they are the uncleanable crystals that are just .. bad. It’s like it’s my job.
Anyhoo, I have thrown peacock ore down a drain, prised a ruby out of a family heirloom and crushed it and I did have a moldovite piece that took a year to really bring into positive vibration.

Andromeda – I couldnt wear or even hold Moldavite without getting all ‘jittery’ until my homeopath made me a remedy from it. Now I am wearing it always and could eat it with a spoon if I could, the energy is just divine!

I have a lot of witchy knick knacks, this and that, you know… I’m a very visual, tactile, sensual juju person: the shapes & colors, textures, smells– raise my Qi. So I dust a lot. I don’t mind though because it’s a lovely time of personally visiting with each piece, connecting & recharging. It’s mutual.

When I went to hospital to have my son, I took a soft stone carved into the shape of a pregnant woman with me that fit perfectly in my hand. I held her & rubbed her belly all day through my contractions. That wasn’t very witchy then, but guess what little swollen stone has been rather witchy ever since? Lol That’ll never go to the thrift shop, & I have plenty more just like her, you know?

He he, ex-Catholic too. But was I ever in my heart? Nah! Neptune in Sagg – I don’t think so.

You went into shamanic space having your baby so truly you brought a new vibration to that object!

Re the crystals, must say that while they are work – they do some helpful things too.
Eg, some subconsciously discarded energies from clients end up in the crystals placed about the room that don’t get dealt with at the time and months later I will clean them and they will a story & need release. So they keep you on the ball and I kinda appreciate that.

I can remember being 5 years old at convent school, being taught ‘you must pray to Mary to intercede for you with Jesus’…
And I clearly remember saying in my mind ‘I don’t think so’

My father was never strict with us about church as he went to hardcore Jesuit school where the priests were mean bastards.
Dad blew up a school toilet just before graduation and they could never pin it on him because he devised a long delay fuse, and he was back in class before it exploded. (Taurus, Aqua moon)

Nice work! As a recovering catholic I say good on your Dad! I rebelled at 15 with blue hair and all us kids got together and told Mum N Dad we were not believers! Would be stuck in church looking across the road at Trash and Treasure market knowing THAT was were I belonged! Yes keep some special talismans but as a Virgo w Libra stellium they must be beautiful and powerful

Everything in cancer here. I was always always from my earliest memory intrigued with ghosts and astrology and witchcraft etc. By the time I got to the convent…
I was not a Catholic and my parents had no real affinity with any church but I went at 11 years to a girls school run by the sisters of the Sacred Heart. I would stand and listen to the preachings and found it simply fascinating. I had no, absolutely no thought that I should believe a word of it and all it did was open up a huge world of teachings and doctrines and dogma. I spent my years there just being quizzical. It has seemed I was stood on the outside looking in. Very removed, somewhat like a detective. I loved my time at school and view parts of most faith with a warm sympathy but that is it.
More interestingly, my daughter, a very strong Cappi at six years old, declared that all this religious stuff is simply there to make people do as they are told! Errrrrr pretty much on the ball kid.

Domestic – I know, that Moldavite has to ‘call’ you , not you grabbing it to begin with, no matter how ‘bolshoy’ it can be. However that said – if it doesnt want to leave, that means it will stay until you are ready. Leave it alone for a while – he allready had a big journey to be here on Earth, so to speak. It took me 5 years to find my first one and now I have 2 and we ‘work’ really well together. Good luck!

Have a friend who doesn’t touch/collect/use ‘tools’ or sacred objects of any description.
The downside of using ritual objects is that you can lose them and they get etherically dirty – especially crystals, they are like recording devices/communication devices so they just absorb everything – so it’s extra work.

Personally I really loved have a certain amount of ritual things.
The upside is they taught me loads and help me bring the intangible into relief in a tactile way – I learned so much from them!

But as I have grown in my practice I find them to be quite inconsequential to my work. But they can enjoyable for clients who need to feel grounded in what they doing.

Anyway, fear of accumulating is kind of baggage in itself. 😉
Maybe just understand you are ‘borrowing’ them from the Cosmic Library. When you don’t need them anymore you will know and can gift them or whatevs, then re-embrace your minimalism?!

De-program it. Eg. Tell yr guides/crystal peeps/higher frequency beings/angels/higher self WHATEVER you relate to – ‘clear this crystal of all psychic impressions, dirty energies and previous programs’. Do a normal cleanse smoke/sun/bury/water if you have time.
Can program the crystal with love and healing vibrations for the friend by asking too.
Short version!

I like having a clear space with only magical items on my altar that resonate for the phase I’m in…everything feels fresher & more magical that way. As a consequence I have a well-loved collection of runes, cards & power objects in a beautiful wooden box that haven’t seen the light of day for many many moons. No pentagrams though- I’d rather cut open an apple.

my name is maria and i’m a witch, and an ex-catholic-in-name, and have a taurus stellium, and i have cabinets of expired spices and dusty books, and hopefully earwigs aren’t living in my hanging herbs, and i am good friends with my spiders and cobwebs, and my desk is covered in 3 inches of magickal paraphernalia and i have two altars in my room and ritual snakes and bottles of moon water and such in the corners. my witchlets have another altar in the living room, and it has all come, the tools, and said, “hold me, love me, use me.” i don’t search them out- they appear, and so i do love them, and i don’t energetically clean in general because it’s a big swamp of energy anyway and i want to sit with it, cause i’m making friends with it which is something that occurred to me when thinking about 4th dimensional entities. i feel like i have the capacity to be a container for it all, whatever any of that means. anyway, i quite like the idea of a trunk with little compartments. it’d be like opening pandora’s box!

This is a very good question. The art of minimal is more eastern and western rituals favour ritual with symbolic objects, do what you love but I imagine the healthiest aspect of this IS that you are questioning what you really need, which is the whole point of minimalism beyond the aesthetic yes?

I find a lot of people in the magic world collect things they never use precisely because they associate the power of what they wish to achieve with the object itself and the purchase or acquisition is almost equal if not more to the ritual. Your best tool is your mind and this is the one most people mis use the most.

This whole minimalist thing just doesn’t sit with me. I can’t get it to fit somehow. So although I appreciate the sentiment and some of the practicality, I will continue to live in a home filled with stuff. I’m just too cancer. Have you guys ever read much Pratchett. His witches are the best. They practice ‘headology’ so have little need for wands and candles.
I think I practice a bit of headology when I need to.

But really, how does one use crystals? I like them, and I know to clean them with salt water and moonlight or sunlight, but I can’t communicate with them.

There is one big chunk of rose quartz I have which sits on my dressing table, and it feels right and happy there, but the others are now grouped together on a shelf. I tried putting small stones near my body but I didn’t really feel an effect

For items that must remain organised and easily within reach I am always in favour of a toolbox of some description. I suppose that includes esoteric things. I have a cigar box with candles and a few odds and ends useful for little focused meditations. Ritual isn’t really my thing though. In fact as an ex Catholic I was put right off it. What did I get out of the Catholic scenes? Hmm… A love of frankincense, learning about our need for forgiveness and compassion when no one else will grant it, and more recently, contemplation of the spiritual role of a priest (chaplain, pastor etc)… Hard to explain I guess. Given we’re in Wicca land here..

I never really got this from ritual though, I don’t think. when I stumbled onto Wicca I loved the broader sense of the world and it’s mysteries but the notion that I had to follow yet another form of behavioural control (physical rituals) to “belong” …well I use what I felt to be useful and left the rest..

I was raised in a Catholic family. Not sure that makes me an ex-Catholic, as I was never into it, really. Never really got into the ritual either. Can’t follow any isms or ists either. I think lots of items have “magic.” I try to consider all my possessions as magical in their own right. Why else have them?

ah see i had another short thing to add [along the lines of ‘omg i go on so much, why can’t people tell me to pls stfu sometimes, also i like the idea of wandering outside to pick up a twig for that day’s energy work, then returning it to nature laterz with thanks] and then i hit ‘post comment’ but had forgotten to enter my name etc and then i went to hit ‘back’ to add the details because that error message lumps me into a whole new screen, instead of a little same-page red-text reminder note thingy, but clicked something else by mistake and i lost everything. AARRGH

anyway
yes! I so agree. how can I say that this piece of molecules arranged in a certain way is amazing and powerful, but this other piece , a silk scarf that belonged to my beautiful grandmother, is not powerful in another way? it’s like material elitism. lol.
I mean I get it, maybe i am an insensitive clod who can’t tell my apophyllite from my reading light? possible.. [but i love my apophyllite though 😉 it’s cool also fluorite oh ok all of them]

there’s a place in my city , one of those well-ordered not-quite-junk-yards – the guy basically salvages useful things, like a car chainsawed in half, old windows, decommissioned scuba tanks… whatever…he’s probably on the contact list of production designers, art directors … i try not to be the “oh this could be useful” person but 12V all i really want is a giant, well-ordered workshed where I can store and use/work with my found objects I know i could be this yardie-guy in another life. then again i could also be a russian figure skater (the thighs omg i am obsessed with hot thighs, this is my goal for 2014 hahaha) in another life so yessss

having said this i do get the crystal structure as recording device thing. i am aware of it intellectually but sadly less so at an energetic level lately as my haute pisces stuff is a little dusty (in my mind) right now
MIT will probably get there (crystals, recording) soon enough too 😉

Well everything is consciousness to some extent, but crystals really are ‘alive’. Tesla said, “Crystals are living beings at the beginning of creation”. I don’t know what kind of experience to relate, just that I can communicate through and with them. Just start having visions holding them oftentimes.

Thank you Andro. see the problem with the internets is that conversations are limited to how much effort we want to spend typing… and I really want to interrogate you (in an uber curious pisces fashion, by plying you with lots of nice tea or wine) about this whole thing. Alas I make do with the mere crumbs that is all we can offer each other on blogs… it’ll have to do for now XOXOX

another ex-Catholic and I feel the same way about rituals…I want no part in them!
I was pretty scarred by the Catholic church and am probably still recovering. I’m a lesbian you see. then there’s all that Catholic guilt. and shame. Shame for what? idk, everything.
My Catholic upbringing was pretty hardcore. Catholic schools preschool through high school and my parents are still heavily involved in their church.

I was atheist for years after high school…was VERY disillusioned. Then agnostic. Now I’m reading about every religion ever to make up for my one-sided childhood. I read about Wicca and thought it was very cool and I resonated with a lot of the beliefs, but in the end I couldn’t get into it. I don’t think I’ll ever follow a religion. Not my personality. I just want to ‘explore’. I think I’m just generally New-Age-y as much as I cringe saying that. Ha.

Minimalism appeals to my Mars in Virgo natal placement as well.
My dream home/art studio would have clean, open space and a proper place for everything no clutter, zero, except for painting supplies and easels.

I’ve gotten into being able to put all my things away. I like the idea of a cabinet for all the witchy stuff. I don’t collect it myself, but I noticed in the kitchen I have a tendency to leave out the things I use most and it occurred to me if I value and use them so frequently, those are the things that deserve their own put-away place the most. This is a shift in thinking for me – I’ve tended to make space for the things I don’t use. Its hard for me to be minimalist. Everything could be something else someday. Scraps of wood, old fabric, that sort of thing.

These are such great answers! Thanks to Mystic Medusa and all of the commenters. I’ve got a lot of good ideas to think about. I’m loving that Chinese cabinet idea. Now I’ll wait for the right one to find me.

I was always a hanger-on to stuff (not hoarder lol) but in the last couple of years I’ve become the total opposite. I can’t stand mess/clutter – it really messes with my energy. I was thinking about this the other day as I am now in a share house sitch living with other people who don’t share my views on this Not much I can do about it so I keep my own space pristine.

I have some crystals but I don’t know that I use them properly. I read somewhere that so many of the ‘crystals’ for sale in shops here are just coloured polished glass. When I have my own living space again I will probably have a room specially for meditation and otherworldly practice. With Neptune almost on my sun and Psyche in 8th house Pisces I find my intuition/psychic sense developing at warp speed and I would like to nurture it properly.

I am a pack rat, but only for high resolution data. Sure, I like a few nice things like my Fiestaware, but I could replace that on eBay easily. The things I treasure most are either ways to consume hi rez data (books etc) or ways to produce hi rez data (my computer, my printmaking equipment, paints and paintbrushes, etc). And those are also easily replaceable. What can’t be replaced is my data, and what I do with it. Magic happens when you turn the intangible into the tangible. I can use tools to turn my thoughts into artworks, writing, etc. I can buy a tube of paint and one #2 paintbrush at the store, and it is pretty much the same as the tube of paint and paintbrush sitting right next to it. But what I do with those tools is different than what anyone else would do with it. Magick is the art of making changes to occur in conformity to one’s will. When I will the paintbrush to turn left instead of right, that is a little magick right there at the tip of my brush.

Yes – this! Being alive and able to manipulate materials IS magic. When you stick with it, everything you do is magic. Cleaning the house and all. And not like “kind of” magic, but really – changing the world. People get all tripped up about doing it right, whatever it is – the material – I think. What’s the point? Live like a Creator.

fuq high five to THAT. We ARE all creators. That’s why all the dogma exists. Imagine if everyone was able to manifest their power to the fullest. There’s be no need for any of the figureheads. There’d be some awesome mayhem probably not all of it good, but mayhem is far preferable to a life of enslavement to rigid dogma handed down through the ages.

LOL housecleaning is a minor aspect of what I revere: negentropy. Nature tends to fall apart, that is entropy. As an example, just look at my home if I don’t clean it for a week. But life is the only thing in the universe that creates negentropy. We take the scattered matter of the universe, and put it into order. It is our nature. Humans gather stuff from all over, stick it in their mouths, and their body uses to grow stuff like hair and fingernails. Then you clip it off, it gets thrown in the trash and then the city dump, and it turns back to dust, in entropy. But man is the only being that makes negentropy this with conscious thought. I pay people to concentrate pigments from chemical labs in Japan and Germany, with gum acacia Somalia, and put it in tin tubes made probably in China. Then the tube of watercolor gets shipped to me in a fancy airplane containing millions of separate parts all holding together by force of some human design, and a worldwide industry infrastructure to keep them flying. Then it gets to my home, I open up the tube, mix it with water that was purified and shipped to my faucet with an elaborate network of pipes throughout my town. Then I swirl it around with my brush, which contains animal hair and a wood handle, wrapped together in a metal ferrule by some prison laborer in China (ugh). Then I touch the paintbrush to paper that was made in Italy from flax grown in Belgium. At this point, all the decisions are mine, I put the pigment on the paper in an order that I choose, based on my pure, intangible thoughts. Even if I just splatter that paint in a random pattern, that is also highly ordered, because I chose to do it that way. The splats have a pattern determined by the speed, distance, and angular momentum of my arm, as I chose to do fling the brush towards the paper.

Then when I die alone, nobody cares, and my life’s work is sent to the garbage dump where it rots and turns back into dust, just as my lifeless body does without its ability to make negentropy. Now my corpus succumbs to entropy. All those things I spent my lifetime collecting from around the world, and organizing and creating order with them, they are scattered back to the four winds. The only thing that can prevent that, is some future human who finds my works after my death, sorts and indexes them, and places them into a collection for future generations to resort, re-index, and reconsider.

Paint is dangerous stuff. I remember back in the 80s when they tried to ban cadmium in paints because it was a toxic heavy metal. Artists had a fit, and lobbied successfully for an exemption. No Cadmium Red oil paint? Unthinkable. Next thing you know, they’ll try to ban lead paint. Oh wait..

They thought the paint was ammunition for the gun they claimed I had. This gun was a super soaker water pistol.
I’ve got a little piece of lead pencil stuck in my leg, graphite doesn’t sound nearly as cool.

Putting things in order after death? It would probably be me, lol, 12th house Virgo. No care for material immortality. No creation is meant to last forever or else we would and then creation would get all clogged up. Burn it down and redo! That’s the living

Oh no, you have to keep everything for posterity. You never know what will be of interest to the scholars at my Presidential Library, after I retire from my second term in the White House. And some of those boxes won’t be opened until 50 years after my death.

I see all these shitty knick-knacks in $2 shops (I guess you guys call them dime stores), they’re made from ceramic, metal, chromed surfaces, and they’re just CRUD! Someone’s gone and cleared trees, diverted rivers, disrupted entire ecosytems , dug giant holes in the ground, built a stinking smelter, or a mill, in some cheap poorly regulated corner of the world so that we can manufacture, export and buy for less than $10 some ugly chrome-plated soap dish or towel rack or something. or a clunky vase. THIS is the stuff that sends me mental.

Omg sweetpea: you just reminded me of the medicine bundle I have from an ex bf & members of his tribe stashed away in my bedroom. In my bedwomb! How did I overlook this??

And I don’t know what I should do with it either (which is how I forgot about it in the first place). My “relationship” with this man was short-lived, a rebound, and while nothing awful prompted our parting ways there exists something that prevents me from keeping him in my life even on a platonic level. I just don’t… like him. He’s one of those slippery people.

It’s a very nice bundle in a beautiful cedar box. Eastern woodland tribe. I’ve had it for 4 years. Sweetpea: What should I do with it? Def it needs to be moved *out* of my bedroom, but then what?

Well, the double Kung Fu Cap (Sun/Mn) ended up a cad lol…but he did deliver the goods so to speak and so was a spiritual messenger for me. Thinking maybe we had a contract or something and he probably owed me 😉

Even tho you don’t feel great about the guy was the bundle a gift to you? I would look at how it ended up in your world and if not sure, ask Spirit for an answer and to guide you thru dreams, prayer, etc.

Perhaps Pegs can chime in…

There was a time when the Dragon had been packed away. I simply had not understood certain things and besides, he had hurt me. I couldn’t bear to look at it and yet there it was, my own power. Why do we women do that to ourselves!?

Years later I used to dress her in crows feathers. She was awesome. One time, the ex Pisces was lying to me and i knew it because he had glanced at the Dragon. Yep, had just known it and later it was confirmed.

I wiped the box down with a citrus wood oil & went through the contents again. Smells so good! It was a gift to me: some from the bf, some from the Women’s Council, some from elders. Like “Welcome to the family: Blessings & protection to you & your son,” which is beyond awesome, but eventually made me uncomfortable as I realized this man & I were not a good fit– do you know he would rearrange my knick knacks when I was out of the room?! Aww hell no.

The bundle is in my kitchen now, which feels better already! As the box is long & rectangular, felt like I was bringing out the big guns as I came down the stairs with it.

Your Dragon is a blessing I guess sacred objects can come to us via any means & will wait for us patiently in any dark closet. Thank you xx

Def ex Catholic- but post Vatican II which my sister always said didn’t count. I got to eat meat on Fridays except in Lent. Icons!!!! Love the blessed Mother statues, because they are Goddess in her mother glory.

me too! Love a good Mary statue, the kitch value and the inherent sacred feminine ….. left mine on the dash board fo the mini bus i went to Sydney Mardi Gras with a bunch of Lesbian friend dressed as Elvis dragkings planning on marching…..wanted me to join them told them I would be cheering with my gay mates on the footpath…..more about the heels I was wearing than anything else – hell I was going to the dance party after didnt want to march for hours before dancing for hours hahahaha

My aries sun, aqua rising and scorpio moon does Feng Shui and astrology The only thing that should be done every year is remedy where the flying star chart shows the 2 star and the 5 land and some form of metal cure usually does it……then making sure that my personal exchanges are of the highest standards

Thinking about Aboriginal shamans now. The aboriginals of Australia were the ultimate minimalists. They used crystals, but I am not sure if they somehow absorbed/ate them, so that they were carried within them.
But they are emanations of the Earth herself, so they don’t die and ‘go to heaven’ as this world is their heritage and ‘heaven’ maybe.

“Gnostics divided the universe into two domains: the visible world and the spiritual one”.
The visible world is an error.. I suppose therefore all the ritualistic objects are an error and the only truth is the spiritual inner world for them.
Melvyn Bragg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K_CL26Uh8A

Was quite amazed when Lyn Andrews wrote in one of her books about the aboriginal women and their attachment to crystals as she came to Oz and spent time with them.
Shows just how universal they are.
I like their sociability ‘O you have crystals too’… a sign of sisterhood?